Maddie - Two Years On

THIS is how missing Madeleine McCann may look today – two years after she went missing.

The picture was created by experts used CSI-style forensic wizardry.

A growth spurt would have left Maddie, who vanished in a Portuguese holiday resort aged three, with less puppy fat and a wider mouth and nose – but with the same innocent eyes.

Forensic computer specialist Jovey Mae Hayes employed cutting-edge techniques used in FBI missing person cases.

Her Michigan-based company Age Progression spent hours studying pictures of Maddie and her parents.

Talking about Maddie’s resemblance to mum Kate, 41, Miss Hayes said: “That resemblance will almost certainly grow stronger as she gets older.

This case actually broke my heart. Why? Because it was thrown at us by the media and every detail exposed for us to foillow and slowly we all became a part of Maddie as if she were in our family.

The credit for this goes to her parents for raising the awareness of the case.

What now bothers me, two years after the event - why isn't such high profile exposure given to more children, just like it was for Maddie? The McCanns, God bless them, have shown us all how to do it. Surely it is time to make missing children a higher priority in the newspapers as opposed to following the likes of Jade Goody, who, to be quite frank, was an uneducated girl from Essex who had some kind of bizarre appeal to the public.

Why do newspapers fill their publications with rubbish, when that very same space could be used to do some good?

The world is an odd place at times.